"Legends from the Booth" Play-By-Play

[OTBjoel]

Hello all,

I figured I'd introduce myself to this forum. My nickname is OTBjoel and I for a long time, I was the last person left doing mods for Oldtime Baseball/Tony 3 baseball.. At the urging of PortraitMatt (Fulling), he got me modding for High Heat. I've been friends with some of the classics guys on here for a while like AlexTony (HighHeat) and Stecropper (he and I go way back to OTB). Stecropper finally convinced me to join and now here I am. I hope to put out one oldtime/classic themed mod every week. I started with my Oldtime Overlay which hopefully you've enjoyed if you downloaded it.

One of the projects I worked on and completed for HH was a total Announcer Play-by-Play conversion of Dave O'Brien to Mel Allen and Ernie Harwell. Mel did the PBP and Ernie did the color commentary. You guys can guess where the audio came from. PortraitMatt wanted to enhance the mod and make Curt Gowdy be the Stadium announcer with echo. The sound files for Oldtime (no longer in print) had the names for many hall of famers and all stars from the past.

When I first joined this site, I started looking through the forums and found a thread for a Play-by-Play mod that took Vin Scully and the idea was for him to do the play by play. This was great as growing up in Los Angeles, Vin is my favorite all-time announcer. There was a time when I even considered recording his PBP from the radio and getting it into the game that way but I knew this would be way too time consuming. When his audio become available later, this made the possibility of this project a reality. I would like to resurrect this idea and join it with my initial concept I did for High Heat. The project is called "Legends from the Booth" and will feature a 3-man announcing booth of Vin Scully/Mel Allen/Ernie Harwell.

First of all, this project would be an extension of work previously done by Hory, TyWiggins, and Hardcore Legend. To get caught up on the status of where they left off, see the following threads:

http://www.mvpmods.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=32767.html

http://67.227.134.100/Forums/viewtopic/t=32809.html

http://www.eamods.com/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=1444.html

http://eamods.com/ForumsPro/viewtopic/t=2588.html

This project appears to have died on the vine so I am taking a crack at resurrecting it. This project is open to everybody but there's needs to be one central Project Manager so I am taking that role. There will be sub projects that I will need lead contributors for and anybody is invited to fill those roles. I will be compiling everybody's contributions and distributing tasks as necessary.

Tools to be used:

1) Sound Editor of your choice (I use Creative Wave Studio).

2) Extractor (Russian program written by same guy who did ASF import/export program). ASF Import/Export will not be used because it requires extensive hex editing. Extractor simply requires that the imported file is shorter than the original. This is done by simply resampling the file to be shorter.

3) gfxpak (to extract team name and player name files)

4) Hex Editor of your choice (for editing sound header files if needed)

Here are some of the phases of the project:

1) Extract sound data for Mel Allen - done

a) Sounds are in .raw format and converted to .wav (3 files - PBP,last names, first names)

Need to split the wave file as it is one big file. Although I was able to get the sound, I was not

able to get the index structure figured out so the file will need to be split manually. I can send

the original raw file to one of this site's talented programmers and see if they can extract it a

better way.

c) Need to index Mel Allen sounds. FINISHED 8/8

2) Extract sound data for Ernie Harwell - done for the most part but I could stand to get some more

- Need the call "He stood there like a house, and watched it go... by.

3) Extract sounds from Vin Scully - done

- Lets give credit where credit is due. Hardcore Legend came up with the idea and TyWiggins

executed it with his skx2vag program. Much thanks to them.

a) Need to index Vin Scully files FINISHED 7/27

4) Import/Replace appropriate sounds in PBP, name-files with help from Indexes.

*** Indexes need to be completed first in case project needs to be revisited by others and to avoid errors. When I did this before for High Heat, I did not index well enough and imported many sounds without any record of where it went. My Mel Allen index sadly is very incomplete and needs to be redone. Without the indexes, you would have to go back into the sound database and play the sounds to see what they are. This is very time consuming and frustrating. Let's just get the indexes and we'll be glad for it later.

What's done so far?

1) Game intros are complete alternating between Mel Allen and Vin Scully intros.

2) Stadium intros are also complete also alternating between the two.

Attached is a sample of the intro of a real game.

In progress:

a) Sound indexing - Vin Scully COMPLETE!/Mel Allen COMPLETE! Mel last names/full names still to be done.

Replace color commentary by Krukow with Ernie Harwell.

- It sounds like a lot of people hate Krukow so Ernie will be a welcome change. Many of Ernie's calls are quite a bit shorter. Where an equivalent call cannot be found, it will be replaced by a 'blank'.

To be accomplished:

a) Completion of sound replacements:

i) player names - in progress with help from AlexTony of Team Classics

II) team names COMPLETE

III) Stadium announcers ?? may not have to do.

IV) a) Clear Krukow - COMPLETE preliminary mod posted

Replace Krukow with Harwell - in progress, Harwell PBP indexed

V) Play by Play of course

VI) Stadium Names - COMPLETE!

Considerations: Right now, the project will have the Play-by-Play between Mel/Vin interchanged depending on which file the game decides to pick. It would be nice to be able to say... have Mel do the start of the game and then have Vin relieve him in the middle. Well, that's a pipe dream as the game doesn't have the ability to do that. Perhaps, when this is complete we will have two versions of the mod, one that is predominantly Vin Scully and one that is predominantly Mel Allen. I personally don't care if the two get intermixed but I know there will be those of you out there who will feel this is unrealistic and want one announcer doing most of the game.

Along this same theme, somebody could write an "Announcer Swapper" program where you can pick the announcer (with the announcers face) and then launch the game from the Announcer swapper program. All it would need to do is swap the appropriate sound files into the game like an Overlay Swapper does. There are just more files and they are a lot bigger.

Time Frame: Expect this project to take at least a year to do, maybe longer. It won't be done overnight. One way or another, I plan on seeing this project all the way through to completion but it will get done faster with help and participation from this community. Unlike in previous attempts at this project, there is no quota as to how many people I want to participate. Since I have done this before, I know how much work it will take. I'll be glad to accept anybody's contributions until they burn out. There are no demands as to the amount of shared participation on this project. I will do the stuff that does not get done by others.

This mod is intended to encompass all the important players throughout the history of baseball. With that in mind, we will not be spending too much time getting all the modern players into the game. Hopefully all eras can be represented equally and we will have enough names in the sound files to satisfy all the Hall of Famers, Award Winners, and All Stars throughout history. Some calls will not be able to be duplicated. In this case, we will either use 'blank' sounds or simply keep the original. The idea is to get the overall feel of the Legendary announcers. If a Kuiper name call or PBP call sneaks in every now and then, I think it is acceptable. If 95 out of 100 calls are done by either Mel/Vin/Ernie then I think our goal will be accomplished.

If you'd like to participate, contact me by PM and let me know what your strengths are with regard to sound modding. Even those that aren't particularly versed in sound modding can still help with indexing the sound files into a spreadsheet. Let's try to keep this thread clean by mostly posting updates to the project. Communicate with me directly by PM. You will need to excuse me if I don't check this thread for a couple of days at a time as I usually mod for 2-3 hours a day and do not always check the forums. You can also send e-mail to joeldeleon@aol.com

I am looking for help in the following areas:

1) Sound indexing: as with the indexing done for the original MVP files that was completed by this community in a previous thread by Ty Wiggins, we still need to index the Scully and Allen play-by-play files. The Mel Allen sounds will be be split manually so the sound bites can simply be saved by the name of whatever call it is.

Skills: Anybody may contribute.

2) Project Leads

a) Need a lead person to handle the pnamedat conversion. We will use the audio index from

Total Classics 8.

Skills: Experience with sound editing and perhaps hex editing the pnamehdr file.

Need a lead to handle the stadium announcer conversion. Curt Gowdy will do as many names as possible from his name database file. You can split/splice as we've done before in Total Audio mods. Where a name is not available from Curt, It's probably ok to leave the original Stadium Announcer. Curt Gowdy files will also need to be split/separated and indexed by name. Reverb effect will need to be added to the name sounds to get the 'Stadium Effect'.

Skills: Same as Above

I will be giving out assignments based on contributor's expertise and desire to work on certain phases of the project.

Oh yeah, I didn't want to scare anybody but there are about 16000 sound bites. At the rate of importing 50 sounds/day, it will be done in about a year.

With that said, I think the excitement of continuing to get new sound calls into the game will keep the interest level up so that people will want to keep working on it. I know that's how I got through it when I did the same thing for High Heat and I did that one largely on my own.

I will be distributing the sound files appropriately to the volunteers on this project.

Sorry if this is long-winded but I wanted to get started on the right foot.

Download the attached sound wave to get a "feel" for what it will sound like.

Thanks for your interest.

[HardcoreLegend]

It's great to see you doing this but I think you've got 'too many cooks in the kitchen' when it comes to the broadcast booth. Finding high quality audio files for all of those guys is going to be very difficult.

[OTBjoel]

HL,

I've already got the audio files. They were derived from out-of-print games Oldtime Baseball and Tony LaRussa. There is no recording of files to be done. They are all sitting on my hot little hard drive waiting to be distributed. Files are in 22050hz, 8-bit mono.

[HardcoreLegend]

Right, I understand that. However, you can clearly tell from that audio clip that the Scully audio is a vastly better recording.

Of course, this is your project and you should do exactly what you want. I'm just offering my opinion.

[OTBjoel]

I've attached a newer sample in the above post. It's better quality than the first one. True, the Scully audio is newer and better quality but if you listen to the new sample, the difference isn't that bad. Besides, Mel Allen is gone now and this would be a great tribute to him. I'll take the best I can get.

If anybody has any doubts about whether this is going to happen or not, here is the entire stadium intro file. You can copy the stdnmdat.big to your dataaudiocdspch_pbp folder. Copy the stdnmhdr.big to your dataaudiospch_pbp folder. There is one call each by Mel Allen and Vin Scully.

More stadium announcements have been found. There are now Vin Scully intros for four classic stadiums (Shibe Park, Crosley Field, Forbes Field, Sportsmans Park, Polo Grounds) Download this file if you want to hear Vin Scully and Mel Allen, announce the stadiums in your game.

http://members.aol.com/joeldeleon/downloads/stdnm.rar

6/18/08 This file has been updated. Figured out that each .dat file is actually a .big sound file with many stadium intros, not just one.

Stadium intro files. If extracted: Slot A by Mel Allen, Slot B by Vin Scully

Next up is the team name file but this is taking a little longer to do as I am still indexing the Scully files. We want to make sure we index all the source files before importing or we could have to redo our work as we find more sound calls.

[highlight_reel]

Hey Joel -- just wanted you to know that it's really exciting to hear that you're doing this project. So far, not a lot of replies have come to this topic... but I'm really excited. Unfortunately, I can't quite help you with this type of a thing... I work on other things (more of a roster kinda guy), but I really appreciate your work.

[Yankee4Life]

I wish to God I can help you on this Joel because I think this is a worthwhile project. But I work overtime every day and I have very little time for really important things like this.

Don't forget now, if you have Tony3 and Oldtime baseball you can use the audio from Lon Simmons too. He was pretty good in that game as I recall.

[OTBjoel]

Yeah, Simmons was pretty good. I don't know... I've already decided to use Curt Gowdy as the PA announcer and that's kind of bottom of the totem pole in the list of priorities for this. Maybe I'll use the Lon Simmons file for the names I cannot find. If you come up with any ideas, let me know.

There doesn't seem to be as much excitement about this as the first time around. Maybe it's because folks are a little pessimistic since this project has flamed a couple of times before. Just know that I'm committed to this know matter how long it takes. I've been playing/modding baseball games all the way back to SSI Computer Baseball and Micro League. Then there was Earl Weaver after that. I figure, as long as I'm playing computer baseball games, I'll just keep at this thing. It's a long term thing you know? No big deal. It will get done. In the big scheme of things, 1-2 years is not that long. If you guys know any people who might be interested, let me know. Also, no matter how much time you guys have, you can still help index the sound files whenever you get the chance.

[OTBjoel]

Yankee4,

Have any idea how we could get the Yankee stadium PA announcer into the game? He is absolutely the best in the game. Any Yankee fans able to record him? Maybe if we can get a stack of recordings, we can get some names announced by him. We don't need everybody, just a good sample would be cool.

[catzrthecoolest]

About your overlay... I notice that on the downloads page, it seems to be getting thousands of page views every second... now, I know this is a good overlay... but the pageviews for it seem a bit... too much. Is something wrong with it...

[Jim825]

About your overlay... I notice that on the downloads page, it seems to be getting thousands of page views every second... now, I know this is a good overlay... but the pageviews for it seem a bit... too much. Is something wrong with it...

There's nothing wrong with the overlays. They are very nice and work very well. In fact, we're including them with the next Total Classics release.

[catzrthecoolest]

I said there was something wrong with the download page, not the overlay. But it seems to be fixed now.

[StormsWarning]

well, one thing im gone say, is welcome to mvp mods!, the names you spoke of, bring very high regard around here, so i know you are the truth,im willing to help you, but i need to know some basic notes, 1. can you by chance get me some links or tutorials, on how not only to remove the voice, but add as well?

would i need to buy anything for my pc, i have a average destop mic, speakers, but im willing to help you, i just would need some notes on how to's.

but i like the fact, that you came out of retirment to do this, seems that bug is flying around alot latly which is a good thing, it's good to see some of the legends come around, and show how it's suppose to be done. let me know through pm bro. tc

[OTBjoel]

OK, I am posting the first few thousand Vin Scully files. In the instructions below, I am just reiterating what Ty did in getting the original pbp calls from EA MVP indexed.

Calls 1000-1999 are in one file and 2000-2999 are in the other. If you get other sound bites in the archive, you can ignore those. You also can ignore the Dave Campbell calls and skip them. All we want are the Scully calls. For ease of use, these zip files already contain the wave files. No conversion needed but it does make the archives quite a bit larger. The original files are in SKX (Playstation format) so I didn't want to have to through teaching everybody how to use it. Thanks to TyWiggins for writing the SKX2VAG utility.

1. Find one of the files below that says "Free" next to it and download the zip file. (If it says "Free", you should still check all of the recent posts in this thread, just in case someone else started working on it, and I haven't updated the first post yet) Let me know when you start working on one of them, so I can update the first post, and so others will know not to work on the same one. These files are rather large so PM me what you are working on so I can notate what is being worked on.

2. Extract the zip file to any folder.

3. Create a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or in Open Office Calc. Download Open Office if needed.

4. Listen to each .wav file. In the .xls file, type the number of the file in the first column, and what they said in the second column. We are not doing Dave Campbell so no need to jot down who said it since we are assuming it's all Vin. Skip Dave Campbell. Because we are skipping Campbell, the spreadsheet row number will not match the sound index so you must notate it in column A.

5. When you're done with all the files, or if you decide not to finish, please let me know and send me your .xls file. You can put it in a zip file and attach it, or email it to me at joeldeleon@aol.com .

I will notate what has been done next to these files so everybody knows where it's at. If you don't want to do an entire 1000 piece file, let me know how much of it you will be doing so I can make the proper notes and others don't duplicate your work. There are 22000 files from Vin Scully/Dave Campbell so it will take as much work as indexing the original Play-by-Play files. It may be a little shorter since I'm not concerned with indexing Campbell.

Here are the first few files (1000 each):

0. 0-999 Completed by me

1. 1000-1999 http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...3c5fdd97f44a789 Finished

2. 2000-2999 http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...bc3cebd869b934a Finished

3. 3000-3999 http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...63c817b6da63f93 Finished

4. 4000-4999 http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...6be16b0a8dae031 rig99 Finished

5. 5000-5999 Finished

6. 6000-6999 Finished

7. 7000-11999 Finished

8. 12000-12999 Finished

9. 13000-13999 Finished

10. 14000-14999 Finished

11. 15000-15448 Finished

12. 16000-16999 Skipped (Matt Vaskersian)

12. 17593-17711 Finished

13. 17712-21823 Finished

http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...4a7deb9451abc7a

14. Mel Allen

a) First names - Completed by rig99

Last names - Working

This appears to be all names. Feel free to download this archive if you want to start working on the player names (pnamedat.big) file. Contact me for the source spreadsheet as it is based on Total Classics with the Total Audio mod filling in the spaces in between.

This is going faster than expected as there is a lot of repetition and Dave Campbell has quite a few blocks of calls that I am skipping.

*** The indexing of all Vin Scully 21000+ calls has been completed on 7/27/08.

Now we move on to Mel Allen.

1) Mel Allen first names - Completed in full by Rig99

2) Mel Allen last names - blueturf/rig99 working

3) Mel Allen PBP - COMPLETED on 8/8

4) Mel Allen full names - COMPLETED

Here's more files to be indexed.

1) Mel Allen first names TL4 version COMPLETED

http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...b60615d54da524f

2) Mel Allen last names TL4 version COMPLETED

http://www.onlinefilefolder.com/index.php?...a08cf3f1fd585cd

So the Mel Allen indexing is complete. I now index Ernie Harwell because I have unlocked the audio files.

1) NUMSG index done.

2) TEAM NAMES index done.

3) PLYR NAMES index done.

4) PBP indexing - COMPLETED

I will be moving on to finishing the Krukow conversion and I'll be doing a parallel conversion on the High Heat announcer file which I never really completed in full. I'm going to complete the Dave O'Brien conversion with Vin Scully. It's unrelated to MVP but something I feel compelled to finish. Now that I have all the Ernie files, I will rework the HH project to include this stuff as well.

[HardcoreLegend]

Here is a zip with calls made by Vin of the batter making contact with the ball.

I have these divided up into folders, so it will be slightly easier to for people to figure out what type of call they are dealing with.

Once this one is done, I'll throw up some others (including City Name/Stadium Introductions).

http://rapidshare.com/files/116664491/VinHitCalls.zip.html

[OTBjoel]

Thanks HCL. I was hoping you'd share your stuff here. I'll check out your file.

[catzrthecoolest]

I'll start on the first one, unless someone already has...

[HardcoreLegend]

I'll start on the first one, unless someone already has...

It would probably go quicker if you catalogued the one I posted. Those are already broken down into a grouping, which will make it easier for us to swap them out.

I think Joel and I are going to diverge on this project once all the Scully stuff is organized. I'll try to keep Campbell or just Scully in the booth while he wants to add Mel Allen.

But it is important that we get the Scully stuff done 1st.

[HardcoreLegend]

Did anyone actually download the link I provided?

Joel, what we need is an app that allows us to a) turn these vag files into wav (hopefully in a batch mode). Then we need an app that allows us to load a list into it and convert said wav files over into their rightful place in the MVP audio file. The app would have to recognize what the file size of the original file is and then convert the new file to be smaller than that.

[OTBjoel]

Well, my stuff has already been converted to wave. You have to download a program called AWAVE. The problem with doing a simple convert is not all the sound bits are exactly the same. I am doing this process manually and having to edit some of the wave files or you will get stuff that is a little off grammatically. I agree, let's get the Scully stuff going for a common starting point then we can diverge from there which I have no problem with. Another issue is that the Scully files have to be down converted quite a bit to fit into the original pbpdat. Somehow the original game's sound files achieve a level of compression that is not possible with the SX program. The original sound files are at a bitrate of 22050hz and to get Vin to fit, you have to download the original 32000hz file all the way down to 11025hz and sometimes smaller. Every once in a while you can get it to fit at 12000 or 16000hz but not often. However, I've found a pretty cool side benefit to all this. Scully ends up sounding like he's coming out of a radio which adds its own "classic" feel to it. I kinda like it and don't have a problem with it.

[HardcoreLegend]

I have downloaded AWAVE. I just didn't purchase the full license to convert them to wave. I just use it to play them.

It was very stupid on my part to upload those .vag files like that. I'm sure most people couldn't even listen to them.

If you'd like, you could take those audio files I uploaded and convert them to wave and then reupload them for people to listen to and catalogue.

That's very disconcerting about the audio change due to the down compression. While it is a cool effect, it will take away from the realness of the game, I think. Could it be we need a better compression tool? How was EA able to keep the quality so high?

[OTBjoel]

HCL,

When I looked at your archive, I only saw a subfolder with "Hit calls" that had anything in it. There was a subfolder with "homerun calls" but it was empty. Can you check your file again? Or you could just give me what the ranges are and I'll upload the wave files based on that. I converted the VAG's to WAV's already. You know, I never did buy a license but I extracted the waves, the very first day I downloaded it so maybe I couldn't do it at this point either. Got it done, just in time.

[HardcoreLegend]

Yeah, there shouldn't be anything in Homeruns. I last worked on that folder 5 months ago. What I probably had intending on doing was taking those files that are in the 'Hit Calls' folder and further subdividing them into homerun calls. I'm almost certain the homerun calls are actually in that large listing of files.

Today I divided up some other Vin Calls such as Defensive plays (Good and Bad), a whole litany of team names and numbers that go in the between inning stuff and postgame stuff.

I'll probably have to break down and buy AWAVE once we get this all organized.

For all the dividing work I've done (10,000 files) there are still 4,500 files I haven't put into folders yet.

[OTBjoel]

You shouldn't have to buy it. If you just download the stuff I'm uploading, you can put those wave files into the appropriate folders yourself if you already know what the numbered indexes are. I'm uploading more throughout the week. In a couple of weeks, the whole thing should be up there.

[MrGravyard]

This is Great! Thank You all for Your Hard Work.... :hail: